Surprise Post

I swore I was going to upload The Bastard Prince, Book 3 of the Blue Moon Rising series, before going to the RWA conference this week, and I actually did it. Even though it's only to Pre-order. Pub date: September 9, 2017. Which makes it possible for me to have the cover and blurb up while I'm "vacationing" from Mosaic Moments instead of the rather downbeat post, Twisted Times. The voting on that, by the way, is pretty much 50-50. Add in my own inclination to feel that it's too soon after Pulse, and I'm going to put Florida Wild on the back burner for a while, hoping to retrieve it when - hopefully - our lives are not so drawn in vivid black and white. Limbo Man, however, with its many Russian characters, is going to be re-edited and given a new cover. And hopefully a new lease on life sometime this fall.

So here's the cover, blurb, and Foreword for The Bastard Prince. No, not a Prologue. I felt "Foreword" was the only term for this introduction to a book that is not only about K'kadi and his three sisters, but the continuing saga of a David vs Goliath rebellion against an Evil Empire. The Bastard Prince is a stand-alone story. It's not necessary to have read the previous books, Rebel Princess and Sorcerer's Bride. (At least I think I managed to explain past incidents as they affected K'kadi's story and this portion of the continuing rebellion.)
  

What to do with K’kadi Amund, the youngest of four royal children—the one who doesn’t talk?  The young man of almost twenty-one who can still lose himself in moments of beauty, or moments of disaster. “Unreliable” and “weird” are some of the kinder things said about him. So why does S’sorrokan, leader of the rebellion against the Regulon Empire, consider him one of his most vital assets? And even when K’kadi comes into his own and gets what was once his greatest desire, he discovers that growing up comes with a price.

Readers of the Blue Moon Rising series will encounter old friends in Tal Rigel and his wife Kass and the Sorcerer Prime, Jagan Mondragon, and his wife M’lani. As well as B’aela Flammia, the eldest child of King Ryal of Psyclid. (The four royals, with their significant others, will stand shoulder to shoulder in the final book, Royal Rebellion.) Other major characters who  reappear in The Bastard Prince are: Regulon Admiral Rand Kamal, Captain Alek Rybolt, Captain Jordana Tegge. New on scene are a family of merchant rebels, one of whom (female) throws a monkey wrench into K’kadi’s plans for a conventional happily ever after.

Foreword

In the infancy of the rebellion against the Regulon Empire—when the huntership Orion was thought lost in a battle against the Nyx and the entire planet mourned Captain Tal Rigel and his crew—Ridó Command on Blue Moon, the third moon of an insignificant star system in the Nebulon Sector, made the most dramatic decision in its history. A decision which set a precedent for Regulon ships seeking asylum from the power of the Empire. When Ridó Command’s viewscreens showed an unidentified spacecraft of considerable size being fired upon by a Regulon battlecruiser, it opened the force field protecting Blue Moon just long enough to allow the unknown ship in, before closing it in the face of the pursuing Reg warship. The cruiser, bounced off into space, limped back to Regula Prime with a tale that brought derision at every level of command. You fired on a ship that identified itself as a merchant delivering farming supplies? Omnovah! What else would it be? Everyone knows what fydding cowards the Psyclids are. Strategically, it’s worthless. We only took over their weird planet because we couldn’t let them flout their independence so near our home space. Yet you try to shoot a ship out of the sky just because you thought she looked like a warship. Fyddit! Let tell you, Captain, we have better things to do with our resources!

And so the rebel leader Talryn Rigel—the blond, blue-eyed epitome of a Reg warrior—came back to Veranelle, the summer home of the Psyclid royal family, a place he had visited when his father, Vander Rigel, was the Regulon ambassador to Psyclid. He took the king’s apartments in the palace as his own, and at the imposing desk in the king’s study, what had been little more than a determined gleam in Tal’s eyes became a rebellion against the Empire he had served so faithfully for nearly a decade.

In the coming years Ridó Command welcomed a steadily increasing number of ships to the rebel fleet. None, however, could compare to the spectacular arrival of the battlecruiser Tycho, captained by Tal’s life-long friend, Alek Rybolt. A ship that would double the rebellion’s firepower and begin the life-changing transformation of K’kadi Amund, son of a king, genetic experiment. The boy who could not talk.

For a link to the Pre-order page for The Bastard Prince, please click here.
 

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Thanks for stopping by,

Grace

 

For Grace's website, listing all books as Blair Bancroft, click here.

For a brochure for Grace's editing service, Best Foot Forward, click here.